Is it too much to ask for? I can’t be the only one feeling like this. I can’t be the only one who feels lost, who feels broken. At once, I feel ashamed, upset, and a million other unnameable things just by writing that. But I also know I need to write it, if only so I can look on this tomorrow or Monday, with fresh eyes, and remember how it feels. I’m scared as hell. I don’t want to go back to school. I’m pretty sure I’ve alienated two of my three teachers. I can’t go another day feeling like this. I can’t feel like this for much longer, or I think I’ll snap and do something that will land me in a mental hospital. But here, when I write, it’s calming. it’s soothing. I don’t have to deal with all those tangled emotions. I can put them aide for later, and let my fingers do the talking and the walking while my emotions go on vacation, get drunk, and hopefully get lost on their way back to the hotel.
I’m about to cry, I’m pretty sure. Music’s not helping. Reading’s not helping. All I can feel, when I’m not writing, is massive, crushing, overwhelming guilt. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I told her; I can’t believe I let it slip to him that I wasn’t interested in it. She can’t believe that I’m not interested in anything but writing and petting my dogs, but I know better.
The funny thing is, it’s not the criticism that hurts. I know criticism is all I should get; it’s all I deserve. it’s the compliments they spread out slowly, as if they know how exactly to hurt me. I cried when i read the last line of his e-mail, where he called me intelligent. I almost cried when she told me she thought I wrote insightful essays, but since she followed that with telling me I was full of BS and needed mental help, I was okay again. I can deal with criticism, i can deal with insults, I can deal with harsh truths. But I can’t deal with compliments. Dear God, I would be fine hearing compliments rarely, and never when I screw up this badly. I’ve thrown up so many times in my mouth the past few days when I think of going back to school on Monday and facing him, I’ve lost count. I’ve replayed the conversation with her over and over, trying to come up with some way I could have salvaged the situation, but the fact is, there was no way for me to walk out of that classroom with any shred of self-respect left. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I don’t know how to go on. I just need someone to tell me what to do, like I’m a small child again, because I’ve been so goddamn lost for the past few months. I can’t look her in the face. I won’t be able to look at him. I can’t face myself in the mirror. I disappointed everyone. My parents have been trying to pull me out for months, and they just might win, because I’m just not healthy anymore. it’s not healthy anymore.
She says I feel inferior. Well, she’s right, and guess what? There’s a reason. When I tried to tell her, I told her something personal, and before I could go on, she accused me of emotionally blackmailing her. Serves me right, for trying to explain something. Every time I try to explain something, it goes wrong. Explain why I picked something? Too confusing to follow. Explain the meaning of the word? I heard ‘air’ instead of ‘heir’, or something to that effect. Explain how I passed math? I have no idea. My teachers the past few years hated me. One of them phrased it perfectly: “Why are you bothering to ask me questions if you’re too stupid to ever understand what I’m trying to teach?” The next two sent the same message, just not in so many words. This year, my math teacher doesn’t particularly care one way or the other, and for that I’m thankful. If he told me he thought I was stupid, I’d probably end up in an asylum.
Sometimes, I wish things could go back to the way they were in sixth grade. I remember walking out of English with an epiphany: if I didn’t care, if I didn’t have emotions, I would never be hurt again. That was so damn appealing then, and it’s appealing now. Now, it doesn’t matter that I spent two years relearning how to feel emotions without help because I was too scared to tell my parents. It doesn’t matter that not feeling anything resigns me to a cold, blank existence. None of that matters. All that matters is that nothing hurt then, nothing except my own fear. Fear was the only thing I could feel, and then it was-well-scary. But now, I would give almost anything to go back to that. Not caring, not feeling-it sounds like bliss. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t write long, rambling blog posts instead of working on one of the stories I’m writing. I feel too bad to write, because I know that if I got a bad comment, I’d end up crying-which makes the not-feeling approach seem that much better.
So, my teachers are pissed at me, I’m falling apart at the seams, this post goes on and on and on and on, and I’m so damned alone because I can’t actually tell anybody any of this, because my parents will use it as an excuse to pull me out, my friends will worry, and my teachers don’t care. Which is why I’m writing it here, on a blog nobody reads.
I’m insanely jealous, I forgot to mention. I’m jealous of my teachers and my parents and my friends because they have or will have something I never can: a family. I can never have kids. Carrying a baby or giving birth will kill me. My parents have kids (obviously). Two of my teachers have kids, one is getting married soon, one has been trying to have kids, and the fifth has nieces and nephews he tells us about. I want that life. I want to grow up, fall in love, move into a house with some land, raise kids, and have a successful career. But that will never happen. For one, who would ever love someone as screwed up as I am? And is it really love if I have to change myself to make him want to be with me? Is it really love if I only marry someone because they asked me, not for any other reason? Is it love if I go on a date with them only when I need to do something to get out of the house? I can’t see myself ever loving anybody. For another, I can’t see myself as an adult. In my mind, there are three Rachels: past Rachel, with whom I’m currently sharing head room; current Rachel, trying to keep it together while everything is falling apart; and future Rachel, who’s dead. I can’t see myself as an adult; I can only see myself dead. I can’t figure out what I want to do with my life, because I have nothing that I can see myself doing for a year, let alone for my entire life. Not being able to figure out something that will hold my interest for a year is what got me into this mess in the first place. I’m terrified that I’m going to live to a ripe old age and never figure out what I want to do. I’m going to community college my first year out of high school just to buy time to figure out what I want to do, because I know I won’t be able to figure it out by the end of my senior year.
I’m moving, It doesn’t seem like a big deal, and it probably isn’t to most people, but to me, it’s everything. I grew up in this house. I can walk to the kitchen, make coffee, and come back to my room without turning on a single light. I’ve never lived anywhere else. It’s only across town, but still-I need to leave even earlier than 6:30 to get to school on time. And everything else is going on at the same time: band trip, AP tests, mock AP final exams, research project crap . . . how the hell can I keep up with everything? How am I supposed to pack my room, do constant homework, read five books from the library, and sleep? How can I do that? I’m not Superwoman. I make mistakes. I’ve been slipping. I’ll say things and not realize I’ve said them until afterwards, when there’s complete silence and everyone’s staring at me.
Things people say have a disproportionately adverse effect on me. Whenever someone calls me ‘stupid’ or ‘lazy’ or ‘crazy’, I pretend it doesn’t matter and laugh it off, but I think people are starting to see through that. I think people are realizing that when I laugh, I want to cry. I think I crave affection but I’m too scared to ask for it. My parents love me, I know, but whenever I hug them they ask me what’s wrong, if I need something. Sometimes, all I need is a hug. Hugs from my friends are nice, of course, but sometimes, I just want to hug my mother, bury my head in the sand, and act like I’m five and my mother’s arms will protect me form the world. Not something a typical teenager admits or wants, but I’m not a typical teenager.
This has turned into a stream of consciousness rant that I just needed to get out, but I can’t force myself to stop writing. I’m beginning to panic just thinking about stopping, not hearing the clack of the computer keyboard, not watching my fingers hit all the different little keys as I type. I can’t really deal with that, at the moment, so I’ll just keep on typing until I’m calm enough to sleep. Which probably won’t be for quite a while, but whatever. maybe PostSecret’s up again. Hey, if you haven’t seen that site, you need to check it out. Yeah, PostSecret’s updated now.
I was reading through PostSecret the other week, and I saw a postcard: 1.5 billion people in the world and I’ve never felt more alone. When I saw it, I thought, “Thank God I don’t feel that way anymore!” It made me feel a little better about myself. But now? Now I’m thinking, “Thank God I’m not alone.” But I am alone. Isn’t that the point of the postcard? “I’ve never felt more alone.” How true that is. It’s made me think a little bit about my history. About the depression, the scoliosis, the brace, the surgery, the spelling bee, the recovery, the hope that slowly got crushed until I just gave up. Then things got better for a little while, and now they’re worse than they were when I gave up in the first place.
Why do I always do that? I know that hope brings nothing but pain, because it is always inevitably, inexorably crushed. It doesn’t matter if it’s the simple hope of driving up the mountain when I had my permit but not my license or the hope that things will get better and I won’t feel so bad about myself. It doesn’t matter how strong the hope is, it doesn’t matter how desperate the hope is, it doesn’t even matter how dark the hope is. It is always destroyed.
I look around me. I see people being expelled for drugs, I see people starving on the streets, I see people dying from suicide and gang violence. But I also see people getting what they want with seemingly no effort. I see people manipulating their teachers and boyfriends into doing whatever they want. I see people starting rumors with the sole purpose of creating drama and getting someone expelled because that’s all they have going for them. And I wonder, how is it that these extremes can coexist? How is it that twelve people can die in a single car accident, and the media abandons that in favor of covering how Obama swatted a fly? How is it that people die every day in a war halfway across the world, and the media covers the latest drama on ‘Dancing With the Stars’? How is it that we as a people are so blind to the goings-on of our own country that the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi herself, can say that we need to pass the health care bill so we can find out what’s in it and have no political backlash? How is it that all this is going on, and we don’t even care?
This country is getting pathetic. When it comes right down to it, I’m just one pathetic girl. It doesn’t matter how much I do, because nothing will ever change. As long as we have career politicians, apathy, a lack of common sense, and a willingness to put others down, America will keep on truckin’ toward destruction.
I feel much better now. Good night.
